30-year-old Christian Arrested Twice and Sentenced to 15 and a Half Years in Xinjiang

December 26, 2019

Ouyang Qiuping, female, born in 1989, is a resident of Yining City in Xinjiang. When she was 24 years old in 2013, she was arrested by the CCP and sentenced to 3 years and 6 months because of her faith in God. In September 2019, she received another sentence of 12 years’ imprisonment on the same charge and is still in prison as of now.

On December 20, 2012, when Ouyang Qiuping, then 23 years old, and several other Christians were in a worship gathering, they were arrested and detained by officers with Bole City Police Station in Xinjiang. During custody, they were subjected to forced indoctrination conducted by personnels with the Religious Affairs Bureau assigned by CCP authorities. To extract information about the place where the church money is kept, the police officers exposed her to biting wind by opening the window and shook her violently while grabbing her hair. After pouring ice-cold water over her head, they locked her in a chair and pressed her head backward as much as possible, making it difficult for her to breathe. While she was about to suffocate and struggling in great pain, the officers just chained her limbs to continue torturing her.

On October 28, 2013, Ouyang Qiuping was sentenced by the Intermediate People’s Court in Bortala Mongol Autonomous Prefecture to 3 years and 6 months on charge of organizing and using a xie jiao organization to undermine the enforcement of the law, and afterward she was escorted to Xinjiang Women’s Prison to serve her sentence.

During her imprisonment, the CCP authorities subjected Ouyang Qiuping to forced indoctrination for another half a month. They tried to force her to sign the “four statements” of distorting the truth and renouncing her faith: statement of repentance, break-up statement, statement of blasphemy, and statement of criticism. When she refused to do it, the director of the indoctrination and re-education department threatened and intimidated her that she would face extended sentence if she did not comply, saying, “Religious freedom? Today the Communist Party doesn’t tolerate your faith, so you simply cannot practice it. The Party is the law! According to the newly released law, believers in Almighty God can be sentenced to life in prison and suspended death.” Afterward, they punished her by asking her to copy the prison rules everyday from 7 a.m. to 1 or 2 a.m. the next day.

On June 19, 2016, Ouyang Qiuping was released from prison. To avoid the police’s arrest and persecution, she had to flee from home.

In December 2017, the police officers visited her home, questioning her family about her whereabouts and took her father to the police station for interrogation, failing to get any information.
In November 2018, she was rearrested and criminally detained for her faith by officers with Yining Public Security Bureau in Xinjiang.

On July 18, 2019, the Kuitun People’s Procuratorate charged her with organizing and using a xie jiao organization to undermine the enforcement of the law at the court, holding that she had acted as a major CAG leader in charge of the work of local churches in Yining area including organizing Christians to gather and evangelize.

On September 4, 2019, the Kuitun People’s Court in Xinjiang held her to be a recidivist, who shall be given a heavier penalty, since she broke the law again within five years after finishing serving her last sentence; she was sentenced to 12 years imprisonment with a fine of 50,000 RMB (about 7,158 USD) under Article 300 of the Chinese Criminal Law.

As of now, Ouyang Qiuping is still in custody, serving her sentence at an unknown place.